Cannon Crasha takes place in a world where two monarchs with disagreements fight it out in two castles, conveniently placed near each other, using resources to build better cannonballs and to attack the other guy before going on to the next set of castles.

Let them eat cake, indeed.

Players control the angle of the cannon and launch cannon balls at certain power angles. Think Pocket Tanks with firing like Worms. Hitting the enemy does damage but also earns coins which are spent on things like units to attack the enemy, magic spells which can affect the environments, and a giant dragon. All this makes for a rather interesting concept; one that offers plenty of fun moments because there’s something entertaining about not just beating an opponent, but destroying his whole building. That is what this game provides!

Oh, but nothing in life as beautiful as cannon warfare is ever perfect. The cannon aiming is largely ineffective due to the limited range of angles, and because there’s seemingly little reason to aim higher than straight forward in order to do damage. Maybe aiming more vertically is handy when trying to take out a specific section, but I rarely felt the need to do that. In fact, my number one way of ensuring a quick victory against the AI? Buy the money upgrade first, then buy the dragon. The dragon pretty much takes care of everything because the dragon is a dealer of death. If the game isn’t over when the dragon is summoned, it will be soon. It’s just too cheap of an upgrade and the AI hasn’t found a way to conquer it quite yet. Oh, and the cannon is useless for taking out ground troops, which makes the survival mode consisting entirely of killing ground troops to be quite the dreadful experience.

The game throws out a lot of references to the 8-bit era of gaming in particular, which is welcome but there’s something about the style as a whole that doesn’t feel entirely committed to the aesthetic. It’s just passing through, welcome to make reference to Balloon Fight and Duck Hunt, but not to feel truly like it’s going all the way for the retro aesthetic.

Cannon Crasha boasts same-device multiplayer on the iPad in both split screen (both players facing each other) and same screen modes, with multiple device modes coming later. Online play would be a welcome addition to this, though I think the game would be a lot better online – and in general, really – if it was a lot faster. The battles just take way too long, and I find myself kind of wishing that things would come to an end far sooner than they usually do.

I think Cannon Crasha has the guts of an entertaining experience, but in its current form it’s largely lacking.